Friday, June 27, 2014

Surge protectors

One thing that almost everybody has is a surge protector hooked up to your household power and your computer plugged into it. What most people don't understand is that surge protectors wear out over time. Every little spike in the line, every little surge, every brownout takes a little bit out of that surge protector. So if your surge protector is 3 to 5 years old you might want to consider replacing with a new one. These items do not cost a whole lot of money, so spend the $20 to replace the old surge protector with the new one and hopefully it will protect you when that lightning strike finally does hit. Stepping it up a bit from the plain old surge protector is the uninterruptible power supply. Now you're putting in a surge protector with a battery that automatically switches on if the power drops below a certain point to help protect your equipment. It like everything else will indeed wear out and so you would have to replace that device probably every 3 to 5 years. If the battery in that device wears out, the charge to replace it at someplace like Batteries Plus would probably be somewhere in the vicinity of $40. And in fact if you were to take that uninterruptible power supply to Batteries Plus most likely they would change the battery for you and recycle your old battery. You do have to keep in mind even when using a uninterruptible surge protector that it will only keep your devices running for a certain amount of time. The more devices you have plugged into that UPS the less time that you will have to shut your computer down before the battery dies when the power is out. My suggestion to most people is to buy enough battery backup to power your computer for at least 10 minutes. This will give you enough time to save all your work and shut down your computer. I need to point out that most UPS units have some power outlets that are surge protected but not powered by the battery. This way you can have a device plugged in that is not critical to your computer needs but will have the protection provided by the surge protector. So things like your computer, your monitor and your hard drives should all be plugged into the ports that have the battery backup. Things like an iPod charger, radio or a set of speakers can be plugged in to the surge protected ports that are not connected to the battery. This way devices that your computer doesn't depend on to get information from are protected but are not running the battery down if the power goes out.

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